Disputed Industries and Discontented land losers

While shuffling for some serious topics to write on, an obituary to the Raigarh stint seemed like a perfect choice; but then I felt apt to share my perspective on a theme that has excited me even before I joined IAS.

The theme wherein the richest are pitted against the poorest and the way the government (or the officers concerned) orients itself makes the difference between a violent conflict and a win win situation...It's the theme that Raigarh district offered lots of insights into.. .The theme of Industrial Disputes^*1…

Raigarh: an Industrial (Dispute?) district 

When the people, as a collective, have grudges and misgivings against an industry that’s setup in their backyard they often resort to a confrontationist mode wherein obstruction to the industry’s operations is the usual first step.

This is also a pre-conceived methodology to involve the district administration, as any such obstruction is bound to be illegal and is usually accompanied with acts of violence against persons and properties.

In my one year's Raigarh stint, I handled 1 such long drawn dispute as the concerned Tehsildar, 3 more as the concerned SDM and a few others  I witnessed as Assistant Collector. Two of them were against public sector companies, the rest against large private firms. Almost every dispute had land losers in the forefront and in all the disputes employment to the locals was one of the key demands. The cries of "company management" being irresponsive to justify the coercive step were also common to all. 

Every industrial dispute has a core of either a genuine grudge or a deep reaching misconception; this usually forms the bulk of the demands that are projected to the people (and most importantly, the media).

Outside the core, the bulk of a dispute is created and governed by commercial-political interests. The triggering factor for a dispute is usually an astonishingly small action by the company (eg. Firing a few local contractors for Non-performance or not yielding to demands of villagers for a special bathing tank)

The usual way to deal with such situations is to first address the triggering factors. Since these are the easiest for the company to commit to, with little administrative pressure the protestors' genuine immediate demands can be acceded to.

The second step is to focus on the other persistent set of demands and separate the genuine grudges from the artificial ones; the leaders of such protests are usually seeking to push in one of their personal agenda in the garb of public demand, it becomes important to separate these threads.

The next step is to analyse what kind of commitment can be legally extracted from the company regarding the genuine concerns and meeting common ground on the same.

The final step is to tell the free riders and nuisance creators, who have by now hijacked the negotiation and the protests, to back off and let the company do its work as it won’t be able to share its profits till it makes it. Needless to say, all these steps are to be kept completely transparent and at no point should the fairness of the governmental authority be made questionable.

This algorithm has stood the test of time (only a year, and still evolving) for me and has created a win-win situation for the aggrieved villagers/land losers and the company. Yet each such dispute throws its own idiosyncrasy that makes for a nice story ... It is these unique experiences that compelled me to write this post.

*1 – “Industrial Disputes”, for the purpose of this blog post, refers to any law and order situation centring an industrial unit

Cartelisation using Government Mediation

A unique industrial dispute started in the supply chain of a prominent mining public sector company in Raigarh. The transporters of raw material went on protests against entry of "outsiders" in the transporting business. Things took a nasty turn when they started obstructing supplies (through voluntary and coerced support from fellow transporters) and sought administrative intervention/ mediation to pressurise the concerned company to not give business to those "outsiders".

Despite the precedents that mildly supported their demand for administrative intervention, such issues were left up to the company to decide.

The administration has no mandate to decide who is "outsider", given the fact that those protesting were all first generation Chhattisgarh migrants. Notwithstanding the protestors ' efforts to involve some "Professional Agitators"^*2, common sense prevailed and it died its natural death. After all, commercial vested interests alone cannot carry out an agitation if the administration and police are fair and non- partisan.

*2 - “Professional Agitators” refers to people who earn their living out of protests and demonstrations. Raigarh, being an industrial district, has dozens of them. They can be found in every drama involving any industry, their noise volumes being inversely proportional to how well they are "managed" by the concerned entity)

The Land Scam and the Clean Up

 Another idiosyncrasy was shown by a Maha-Ratna public sector company wherein the hundreds of hectares of land that it acquired were done in a way to cost the company a few hundred crore rupees extra. It was done through what we later found out to be a major land scam that involved company officials as well as lower levels of revenue administration.

The land losers who actively participated in the scam were rewarded many folds and so were the brokers.  When the district administration took cognizance of the misdeeds and worked overtime to reverse the damage done by conducting a thorough investigation, the commercial interests of many were hit. 

The resulting protests were started in the garb of developmental issues yet the root cause (which they were foolish enough to mention in writing) was the investigation into the land scam. They wanted immediate call back of the same. Normally protests like these, with no moral authority whatsoever, don’t deter companies.

However the fact that arguably every employee of the concerned company itself took active/passive part in the scam, made the company management's own moral position dicey. 

Political Hijacking Eventual Fizzling

The dispute that touched me the most was built around the most genuine concern of all- employment of one family member of a land loser to be given by the company which acquired its land within 2 years of taking possession.

As discussed before, its triggering factor was alleged firing of 25 land loser employees by the company management without giving due reason.

However the company had nearly 190 such land losers and it had given employment to only 45. I found the dispute to be a meaningful opportunity for the administration to make the company commit to employing all the 190 odd people. 

To cut a long story short, the issue soon saw involvement of the "professional agitators", active honourable political post holders and even wannabe youth leaders. With the effect that genuine and artificial issues got mixed up to an extent that was irreparable (who would teach the difference between legal mandate and a moral mandate to an emotive crowd of 300 odd people stuffed in a meeting hall?).

I felt let down because just when the company was made to came forward to give everything that it could, the "public mood" shifted to the more short term and impossible demands, leading to an entire change of focus and an amorphous end of the agitations.

Dramas and Disputes

Agreed, a lot of it is drama. 

Agreed, the front actors are usually crooks. 

Agreed, the commercial vested interest dominates the negotiations.

Yet, when I visited the villages that were affected by the concerned companies, there was a genuine grievance that I could sense in the quietest individuals. Who would usually be standing on the side lines with a perplexed  look  while the "leaders" demanded and approach me at the end with folded hands and a withered piece of paper, asking for a perfectly legal claim which should have been theirs months ago.

It always made one ask, yes we can solve these dramatic problems but why give a chance for the genuine grudge to arise?

In today's date, land matters the most. Hence our policies pertaining to its acquisition and rehabilitation matter. What matters more is their implementation - land scams during acquisition and percolation of land brokers that rob the real owners off their rehabilitation rights needs to be stopped.

District administration in Raigarh has taken suo motu cognizance of illegal land transfers and passed orders of revenue recovery in the tune of tens of crores. All the SDMs are being instructed to conduct gram sabhas in areas where land is going to be acquired in near future so as to make people aware of the rehabilitation benefits and in turn deter the land mafia that acts on the information asymmetry. I hope this trend continues here and elsewhere.

I have learnt from my mentor over the last year that a rich man in India will get its work done through the government through one way or another, it's the poor that we (in the IAS) need to proactively work for. In these Industrial disputes where the rich were pitted against the poorest, the side the Government (or I) was on was never in question. Instead of treating the protestors as criminal breachers of peace, we treated them like aware citizenry whose lawful demands we will ensure to meet.

These disputes provided an opportunity for me to negotiate on the behalf of those who would otherwise just hope to be heard and let go. I, like all the other anonymous bureaucrats, will soon be forgotten forever, yet the warmth/appreciation I felt from the genuine protestors and the memory of their contentment on being heard and addressed to, are going to stay with me..

PS: A Demi- Official obituary to Raigarh stint might still follow ;-) 

PPS: All views expressed here are purely personal and have no connection with those of the Government. This post has been carefully modified to fit into the ambit of freedom of speech permitted to officers under the Rule 6 and Rule 7 of All India Service (Conduct) Rules, 1968.

God and Government

Shifting Vantage Points & Slipping Perspectives

It's an eerie feeling, sensing your perspectives reversing within minutes. Issues you felt strongly about, opinions you passionately held as your own, change inconspicuously without any one's intervention. I have been experiencing  this quite often since i have joined the field-rung of the government. What came across as perfectly rational and obvious while reading newspapers and scholarly articles during UPSC preparation, seems fraught with absurdities now. The simple, straight forward solutions offered by "experts" that invoked anger on the highhandedness of the "government", now often appear as practical impossibilities.

This is not happening because my cognitive capacity has been swallowed by the venomous monster called bureaucracy or because I have fallen prey to the incorrigibly corrupt government's ways (as some of u will immediately be tempted to comment). This is happening because with each passing working day, I am grasping the meaning of the notion of "government" better (and this is a long drawn process that has just begun).

Understanding Government: God & Religions 

The concept of "government" is in some ways similar to concept of "god"; There are hundreds of ways to fathom it. At the extreme is the notion that God (or Government, as the case may be) is in everything/everyone (with devolution through local self governments and expansion of government's ambit this may not seem very far from truth).The other extreme is that of Buddha like denial - "it's not this, it's not this", used in the context of government to pass the buck and evade responsibility ever so often.

Unlike the concept of god, which can be grasped through all the extremes and even the "middle paths", the concept of government lies somewhere in between the two extremes and is highly specific to the time, space and function continuum. In short - there's no easy answer to what government is. It's your vantage point that will decide what the term "government" will mean to you.

Complexities and the Xenophobia

For those located outside the govt. setup, the means to learn about the system's inside are limited. A large part of the govt remains unexpressed due to the legacy of the official secrets act. We see it in movies (mostly mindless and occasionally meaningful) and media publications (mostly event centric and occasionally process centric). We experience it in the nasty encounters with the cops and clerks, yet we never really "feel" it as a whole. So there will always be this divide of "Us, the citizens" and "they, the corrupt cops, clerks and politicians of the govt". This divide fans preconceived notion and hinders constructive collaboration between the "citizens" and the "government", the "us" and the "them".

This divide also allows for messiah driven politics that demonizes each and everything  - be it violent "Naxalites" or the non violent Jantar Mantar Gandhians; Absolute dissection of society as "us" and "them" is bound to leave negative sociological impressions.

Alas! Truth is that even within the govt things are not all that simple to grasp. There are hundreds of xenophobic tendencies cutting the length and breadth of the government setup itself. Some of which I have been experiencing myself.

Even when the "Citizen" sees the entire "Government" as a whole, there exist real psychological and functional divides between civil servants and politicians, "money- driven" and "rule-driven" civil servants, staff of various departments, etc. This list goes on and on, till you begin to see that each man/woman indeed feels(both personally and professionally) alone in this huge "system" that he/she refers to "government". But what is this "government" ?

Revisiting the Slipping Perspectives

So given the neoteric face-off with "reality", my perspectives on the RTI Act, environmental activists and print media have slipped considerably.

While reading about the RTI Act, it was apparent to me that proactive disclosure (section 4 of the Act) should be the way out and all the "concerns" that the critics (vested interests) throw should be addressed via it. But when I am planning for such proactive disclosure under RTI Act for my organisation - I am facing the fear of "nuisance creators" among the clerical staff. Although I will be analyzing the RTI applications data in detail and may publish some notes in a separate blog post, on the face of it, it was clear that there were some selected "RTI activists" in the district who earn their livelihood solely through the extent of harm they can do to the babus through embarrassing information. I think it's a good first step, at least there now exists the means for a "common man" to access such public information and bring embarrassing facts to light, but what is disheartening is that this whole activity seems to be driven solely by blackmailing and "internal settings" - there is no real activism around RTI that seems to be happening in the interest of common public.

This brings me to another interesting perspective that I used to have about the print media. Sometimes there is a front page news on an IAS putting a logbook entry for his official vehicle wrongly, amounting to misappropriation of public money to the tune of 250 Rs. and much more often than that, one doesn't see the journalists covering events/ activities of corruption that are considered a part of "public knowledge". People more experienced than me routinely tend to shrug these things off knowing them to be the difference between "ill-managed" and "well-managed" media - I am yet to find this out myself.

Being posted in an industrial district with a majority of tribal population, I routinely look for competent/willing civil society organisations that can supplement and monitor government efforts and act as catalysts for development. I am becoming habituated to my queries on such NGOs/Activist Fronts being answered by contempt. It's considered common knowledge that they are on the pay roll of the industries, who in turn "manage" them in order to avoid any nuisance causing activity. Needless to say, CSR funds, that I have written about before, help the companies in this respect. 

I strongly believe in not stereotyping individuals and organisations. I believe in looking for the silver lining when the sky is gloomy. I am sure that there are some activists, civil society organisations and media personnel in the district who defy these stereotypes and follow their conscience - I have found a few already, am not stopping till I find the rest ...

PS: All views expressed here are purely personal and have no connection with those of the Government. This post has been carefully modified to fit into the ambit of freedom of speech permitted to officers under the Rule 6 and Rule 7 of All India Service (Conduct) Rules, 1968.

Had you been here

This is the first poem I have ever penned down, even in private.

What Shall Thou Seek? : A case of misplaced incentives in the Govt and beyond

Most "successful" people start their journey by chasing material gains and well-recognised targets like medals, public appreciation, competitive positions, etc. It takes some time, when they become mature (old? :)) enough to realise that they actually derive pleasure from the process and not the end result. eg. one swims because he likes to challenge himself in the pool and the medals won are of token importance, similarly intellectual curiosity is what propels him and not the greed for extrinsic recognition.

But, this transition from seeking outward incentives to finding joy in things one likes to do, is often an elaborate one - It takes years to mature. In between, there is a position (where I often find myself) when one starts doing something because he genuinely likes to do it, but when the possibility of gaining some extrinsically-awarded and socially-appreciated benefit lingers close - the mind goes back to the old habits of target-chasing.
It becomes a typical situation of a greedy man looking for everything he can grab - without knowing what he wants and what he would do even if he gets it all. (a common sight of dogs chasing a moving car and when they do outrun it, they don't know what they did it for)

It is in this context that we need to look at the incentive structure available in the Govt. of India. It is now urban legend that the usual incentives in Govt service - transfers, postings, and often (allegedly) awards in the Govt. are determined more on non-professional considerations than on merit. Sycophancy has its own sweet importance - and it pays! We have seen it not just in the field but sometimes even in the training regimen. (Although the field situation can be much more brutal, often not even offering a facade of distributional justice to help one heal his wounds). So what incentives are left for one to chase?

Clearly, chasing fame or money or even recognition can often lead to gross errors of judgement. Search for fame has made some officers "encounter specialists", "media savvy" and "news room commentators"; Those seeking recognition often confuse the latter with the appreciation of political and bureaucratic bosses and become just another cog in the wheel of exploitative state machinery; I guess I don't need to elaborate on the effects of chasing money while being in the public service.

So the only thing that is possibly left to chase is this cliched, catch-all phrase called "inner satisfaction". But as I had mentioned earlier, for less-than-mature people like me, this is often a difficult task, because the mind is still tuned to the old habits of seeking appreciation. After all, who would like to spend hours and days of effort into a risky, difficult and out-of-the-league endeavour when he knows that a much easier and cheesier presentation is likely to be more appreciated?

It's very intuitive for a lot of us to look at life as a process of walking the tight-rope-  there are two mutually competing contradictions and both of them are real. I guess "putting your best efforts in the service" would mean that you keep on propelling yourself (often by distorting the perceptions of the extrinsic incentives) and still don't become too concerned about whether you grab those incentives or not. (Another one of life's paradoxes).
That is the importance of cultivating hobbies - because pursuing hobbies often (though not always) keep a person tuned in to the fact that the process is more importance than the end, that perpetual chasing is not what life is meant to be. This attitude can enable one to allow the job to consume him- by exploring all the possible avenues for inward self-growth, yet not be too concerned about collecting praises. (In fact officers who fear losing their "popularity" (likability-quotient) can be more spineless than the outright pliable ones)

It's about eating your favourite ice-cream in your favourite store and not getting into the habit of collecting the bills for preserving the memory. And even if you do collect and store the bills (possibly in a photo album), then treat them only as the tokens and not the substance of the experiential pleasure you derived.

So in such a world of misplaced incentives, the choice is simply between the substance and the token; I know what to choose, but hope that my old habits of collecting the tokens dissolve over the course of time.

Visibly Lost Children

"Juvenile Justice" - The term is radical, indeed, in a country where "Justice" itself is an amorphous concept plagued by selection bias in its delivery.

This is why the Juvenile Justice Act is a "progressive" one - it not just underlines the need to deliver justice to those below 18 but also talks of following an empathetic, needs-based, reformist approach by all stakeholders while that is being done. This blog post is a story of a field-visit that my NPA squad undertook officially to get sensitized about the issues confronting the enforcement of this act.

We were asked to go to a prominent bus stand of Hyderabad and spot "Visibly Lost Children". Mr. Isidor Phillip, the social worker who helped us understand the importance of the act, defined them as children whose childhoods have been snatched away and they are left to fend for themselves in an alien environment with no meaningful choice to exercise.

So, off we went, dressed in our civil clothes, with vague notions of poor children in our minds, and a hidden desire to enjoy this day that has been freed of evening outdoor sessions. All of us have seen them - almost naked, lonely children - begging on our street lights, or selling barely-useful Chinese plastic-ware, or just taking care of their younger sibling on the side of the road. What we haven't done is to try talking to them. When we did try to talk - we were in for a surprise.

Visibly Lost Children who would run away
as soon as we asked personal questions

The moment we asked questions pertaining to their personal lives - families, income, etc - the rag picking boys became suspicious and started to run away. Same was the case with the begging children. So sharp was their instinct to sense abnormal interest that some of the children who were loitering around around, would start to gradually walk away as soon as I or anyone else, would approach them. What have we done to these children so as to make them so suspicious to the entire world around them?

After a couple of hours of spotting helpless children, our teams found one child (age around 10 years) working in a restaurant in abysmal conditions and a girl child lost on the bus stand.

I turned my attention to the child labour Hussain, who was apparently sent off by his poor family, living in northern Karnataka as a sort of repayment of his father's debt to the owner of the restaurant. The boy was really shocked and afraid, as any child of his age, surrounded by 10 strangers in a room where a policeman stands guard outside, would be.

A frightened Hussain

 However, as it turned out, while my squad mates discussed the legal implications of the two cases and the steps to be taken further (due to the complete ignorance of the law amongst the local SHO, some of us had to talk tough on him so as to make him understand that these are not simple run-away cases that can be solved with mere verbal police intervention, they needed the intervention from the CWC), I became very good friends with Hussain. It took a few chocolates, a large number of funny games on my touch-screen phone and few witty comments about the obesity of some of my squad mates to finally make him comfortable. That's when he began to talk.



A pic clicked by Hussain

 The boy didn't mince words in saying that he wanted to go home ("ghar jaana hai"). He described how he had his extended family, friends and parents  in his home town, where he attended school. There came a stage where he would not sit quietly while a serious discussion on his case was on, and would take pictures from my phone. This was when he saw some pics of mine in uniform and asked "Tum police hai kya ji?"  (Are you police?). He also asked me "Tumhara jaat kya hai ji?" (What is your caste?). I was taken aback by this question because, no one had discussed religion or caste since we met. I said, I don't know what caste is and asked him what it is. He replied "Main mussalman, jaat toh hota hai na ji sabka" (I am a Muslim and everyone has a caste).
 

It was a tough 2 hour deliberation session with the
 SHO, until he was told about the Govt. Order

Now let me propound upon the quality of enforcement of the Juvenile Justice Act. For any law to be enforced, there should be a person to enforce it and he should atleast know that he is supposed to enforce it. However, when we interacted with the police officials of that prime urban police station, where NGOs like Divya Disha have spent years in spreading awareness about JJA, we found that except the SHO, very few were aware about the law and the role of police under it. This is when Andhra is considered to be one of the better states in the act's enforcement, what is the state in other states can be left to your imagination.
 
The SHO was in favour of dismissing them there and then. Mr. Isidore Philips had to refer to a govt. order of the same year so as to tell the SHO that Child Welfare Committee (CWC) will be the body to decide upon the two cases.  This is the fate of Govt. Orders on the cutting edges of police organisations. When we don't know the law, how can we implement it?
 
This is where the role of IPS officers becomes important. They can actually make the enforcement meaningful, and once the people get a taste of these much-needed laws, they will begin to demand their enforcement. Until that happens, these officers need to act as change agents.  After all, what excuse have we got in not doing the needful here? There will be no political intervention if we take an illegally-employed child labour from a commercial setup and send him home. We dont need extra funds or man-power to do that (especially in the cities where there are umpteen policemen posted in the name of routine protocol duties), all we need is a desire to deliver justice. So rather than waiting for a Supreme Court-driven initiative to reform our entire organisational setup, let us do our bit to deliver better justice while we can with the laws already there with us.

National Police Academy : A Glimpse

Despite the fact that the training regimen in the National Police Academy gives me absolutely no time for myself and the training often deals with things that are of little interest to me, my stay here has come to be characterised by a sustained subtle feeling of self-fulfilment.

This magnificent feeling is somewhere related to the pace with which life in NPA moves. Every single day that I have spent here has had at least three times more action/activities than any other day of my life spent outside. This is evident in the distorted perception of time that I feel here. It is a common experience that while recollecting something about yesterday, I feel as if it happened maybe a week ago!

In the last few days (i.e. the last 3-4 days), that I have spent here there have been so many new experiences that seem to have covered up for a whole month of buzzing activities in my days before joining NPA; I have come to love horse-riding in this time - much of the credit goes to the fact that I found a horse that complements my personality. His name is SaturnGold and is the most muscular horse amongst the 60 odd horses we get. I had morning classes of horse-riding when SaturnGold cantered (and often started galloping) like an uncaring beast.
            
All that swimming that I have done in the last few days has also added to the enthusiasm and jest. The pool is where I can continuously challenge myself to do more laps. This is also the place where new things can be learnt - rolling underwater to finish the laps, to matching up with the instructor who swims twice as fast as me with seemingly half of the effort.

The Un-Armed Combat classes have also spiced up the days with the practice-oriented modules where we get to work our moves on our squad mates and practise different locks, holds and techniques that will be very relevant in the days ahead.

The Public Speaking module was also a refreshing break from the regular routine. The expert who coached us, knew the tricks and I finally ended up working on my articulation skills. It helped me break the monotony of self-loathing about how I have become a nervous wreck as far as public speaking is concerned. I simulated an experience of mine on the national highway connecting Gokarna and Goa, where the S.P. and the D.M. had to negotiate with a group of 500 protesters who had blocked the highway on the pretext of some trade-related demand. It's surprising to see how agile the mind becomes when called upon to do so!

It's always a pleasure to hear our Director V.N. Rai speak. He has the rare ability to sum up a lifetime's worth of experience and knowledge into simple linguistic constructs that are delivered in a matter-of-fact manner. When he spoke about how police can help address not just the police-related problems of the local people, but also the developmental problems - he made us understand how people can be empowered to do their own work.

Finally, the book that I am reading these days (and which should be over by tomorrow) - Lajja by Taslima Nasrin, helps me to fill up the time when the indoor classes are dealing with something less important or trivial.

Life here has given each one of us a distinct and loud message - Stop the habit of stealing time for yourself from the training activities, rather just know that all this time is your own and immerse yourself in them.

Following the law : Really?

Almost every talk in the academy is referred to as "thought-provoking" by the fatigued probationer, compelled to give the vote of thanks. However, there are few speakers who can actually provoke some thoughts in the numbed minds of the IPS probationers.Satheesh Balan was one such rare speaker. A simple man, with a simple, straight-forward understanding of the world (which only a few can afford, because it needs a non-compromising attitude towards a lot of things typically seen as "worth" compromising for), he spoke about the complete lack of sensitisation in Indian police.

Combined with a number of instances from his personal life, both about pre-IPS and post-IPS days, of how police harassment is everywhere and is present in the most innocuous cases which we have come to perceive as harmless routine.

The most provoking aspect of his speech was how difficult it is to challenge the social norms concerning patriarchy and caste hierarchy. Giving his experiences of implementing the Domestic Violence Act and the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, it was amply clear that there will be occasions when every single individual around an officer will prefer to avoid implementing these laws. It is then that the officer concerned need to ask himself whether he has what it takes to provide justice to the aggrieved even when he has absolutely no support (and often enough, violent opposition) from those around him. It will take officers with conviction and fearless zest who can take pains to make sure that people get what they are legally entitled to, even when their own social setup seeks to keep them perennially deprived.

Today, with laws like RTI, Domestic Violence Act, Juvenile Justice Act, SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, Panchayati Raj Extension to Scheduled Areas Act, etc. - we have a unique problem at our hands. These laws give the official machinery the teeth to act in a socially progressive and naturally just manner, however what it needs is officers with conviction and guts to do what is written. First of all, these officers need to themselves be sensitised enough as to understand that the time for such progressive legislations has come about. Second, they must have the courage and skills to show the way to others (including, their seniors and peers).

I believe if I can hold myself together and do my bit to this effect, I would die happy.